Painting of a dark-skinned man seated and wearing a red open-necked tunic. He looks up to the right. His wrists are shackled and a large chain rests at his right, running down the bench he sits upon.

The Captive Slave (Ira Aldridge)

John Simpson · 1827

View at the AIC ↗

Palette

Bistre
38% of the image
Black · text contrast 14.5:1

Lamp black
27% of the image
Black · text contrast 17.9:1

Chestnut
18% of the image
Brown · text contrast 9.7:1

Mahogany
9% of the image
Brown · text contrast 13.0:1

Sepia
5% of the image
Brown · text contrast 8.3:1

Dark chocolate
3% of the image
Black · text contrast 16.7:1

Colours measured by this site from the museum image (k-means in CIELAB). Names are the nearest in our own list and describe how the colour looks, not the pigment. Text on each chip uses whichever of black or white contrasts more (WCAG ratio shown). How

Details

Artist: John Simpson
Date: 1827
Type: Painting
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 127 × 101.5 cm (50 × 40 in.); Framed: 167.1 × 141.7 cm (65 3/4 × 55 3/4 in.)
Place: England
Period: 19th century
Themes: Portraits
Main colour: Black · lightness 17, colourfulness 15

Art Institute of Chicago, Purchased with funds provided by Mary Winton Green, Dan and Sara Green Cohan, Howard and Lisa Green and Jonathan and Brenda Green, in memory of David Green. Museum record. Public domain: the museum's is_public_domain field read true when we last checked (2026-10-25); image released under CC0. Licence rules

The Captive Slave (Ira Aldridge)

Palette

Details

Works that share this palette

More like this by theme